Workers challenge
POLAND and technical organization of the strike. Each one was headed by a strike committee member.
Some of the strikers' demands resembled those that have in general been formulated during the strikes that have been occurring since the beginning of the year — a 50% in-
"normalization"
crease in base pay, full payment for days on strike, an increase in bonuses linked to working conditions. Others, however, harked back to the tradition of the August
1980 strike, and testified to the steel com-
A NEW ASSAULT was launched on the living standards of working people in February, when the bureaucratic regime decreed staggering price rises. Social and political tensions have risen sharply. On April 25, public transport in the cities of
Budgoszcz and Inowroclaw was paralyzed by an all-out strike. After 12 hours, the workers won a 69% wage increase.
On the following day, a prolonged strike began in the gigantic
Lenin steel complex in Nowa Huta, in the suburbs of Cracow.
The Cracow student movement launched a hroad movement of solidarity with the workers. A week later, workers in the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk declared a sit-in strike. Material demands were combined with calls for trade-union freedom and political democracy. General
Jaruzelski's regime faced its biggest test of strength since the defeat of the political revolution in December 1981.
The following is a reconstruction of the history of the first two weeks of the dramatic struggle of the workers and students in
Cracow, based on information obtained from activists in several Polish independent organizations.
CYRIL SMUGA & ARTHUR WILKINS
N THE MORNING of April 26, Andrzej
Szewczuwaniec, a 38-year-old worker, set off the alarm in his department. It was not because of an accident or a breakdown. It was a call for a strike. Shortly afterwards, 700 other workers in the Lenin steel complex rolling mill downed tools. The strike quickly spread to the other departments. By 2pm in the afternoon,
4,000 workers were involved; by 5pm, more than 8,000 workers were on strike. On
April 27, the steelworks was shut down — more than 20,000 workers were in the factory grounds. The official union, the OPZZ, fiercely opposed it, although it was to try to negotiate with the management behind the strikers' backs.
A central strike committee was elected.
Quite naturally, it was chaired by Andrzej
Szewczuwaniec. At the start, it included nine members, all Solidarnose activists. As more and more departments went on strike, additional members were added until the number reached 18 in the evening of May
4. Three of those elected were former leaders of Solidarnosc in the factory. They had been fired at the December 1981 coup d'état, but had come back to join the strikers. They were Jan Ciesielski, Mieczyslaw Gil and Stanislaw Handzlik.
"We have to prepare for
La long strike"
The strike started to become organized. It was decided that each team would spend 16-hour stretches in the factory followed by eight hours of rest. It was not properly speaking a sit-in strike. In particular, the strikers did not control the entrances to the factory. But the workers were to keep up the pressure by maintaining a permanent massive presence.
When the management closed the canteens on April 30, the strikers issued an appeal to the population. Quickly, they were flooded with food. On May 3, confronted with the management's stubborn refusal to negotiate, the strike committee declared: "We have to prepare ourselves for a long strike."
Commissions were elected to take charge of supplies, dissemination of of information, dealing with sabotage attempts by management stooges, secretarial functions plex workers' determination to extend the movement to other categories of workers.
For example, they demanded a doubling of the wage compensation for the February price increases (from 6,000 to 12,000 zlotys a month for all workers in industry, health care and education, as well as for pensioners. They also demanded a sliding scale of wages for all workers, a natural response to the increasingly galloping inflation. Demand for reinstatement of 1981 activists
Finally, they demanded publication in the media of information about the strike (in August 1980, publication of the terms of the agreement signed at the Gdansk shipyard was a major step forward in the emergence of Solidarnosc) and a guarantee that the strikers would not be subjected to repression. As a concrete token that there would be no repression, they demanded that the Solidarnose activists fired since 1981 be reinstated, and in particular the leaders of the Nowa Huta Steelworkers' Commission.
Moreover, the strikers decided that after the end of the action, the strike committees would be automatically transformed into organizing committees of the workers' own union in every shop. This posed the question of the legalization of Solidarnosc, although indirectly.
Extending the strike was at the center of all the strikers' concerns. At the beginning, every message of solidarity was greeted with outbursts of joy. When we telephoned the strike committee, a member of the information commission told us, "If the strike does not spread, we will be swept away. We are sick of messages of support. We want news of strikes!"
In the first days of the action, it seemed that the strike would spread naturally. Strike actions broke out in the Stalowa Wola steelworks, in the Domel engineering factory and in the Pafawag railway equipment plant in Wroclaw. They quickly came to an end after big wage increases were granted. Only in the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, the cradle of Solidarnosc, did the sit-in strike launched on May 2 become consolidated.
After a day's delay, Lech Walesa joined the strikers. Unlike August 1980, the action did not spread to the other Baltic coast enterprises. Since May 5, the shipyard has May 16, 1988 • #141 International Viewpoint
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Jaruzelski's
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personnel, we have declared a stay-away strike [in the schools] and an occupation strike in the student dormitories. This is also the position of the Regional
Workers' Committee of the PPS. It is necessary to strike where possible to extend the mass protest, without exposing ourselves to mass repression. *
POLAND been surrounded by large forces of riot police and cut off from the rest of the city. All day long on May 6 the management issued appeals to the strikers, calling on them to leave the yard and threatening them with intervention by the police forces.
In Cracow, the students mobilized rapidly and on a larger and larger scale in solidarity with the Nowa Huta workers. The first demonstration of a thousand students took place on April 28. Representatives of the various opposition organizations spoke at it — from the Independent Student Association (NZS), the Freedom and Peace movement (WiP), the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and the Independent Poland Confederation (KPN). They called for supporting and extending the strike. The police forcibly dispersed the demonstrators.
On May 1, in response to a call from the PPS, supported by the NZS, the KPN and various Solidarnosc structures, a march of a thousand people started out from the Kalinowe neighborhood in Nowa Huta toward the Lenin steelworks. It was flanked by
An hour and a half later, the police attacked it violently. At 6pm, outside the church after a mass for the strikers, PPS activists organized a new march of two thousand people toward the steelworks. It was broken up even more brutally.
On May 3, the anniversary of the proclamation of Poland's first democratic constitution in 1791 and the former national holiday, the provisional coordinating committee of the groups for Polish independence in the Cracow region (which includes several Solidarnose structures, along with the KPN, the PPS and other political groups) organized a big demonstration to support the steelworkers and call for an extension of the struggle.
Some 10,000 people joined the demonstration coming out of the mass. The police managed to encircle the head of the demonstration. Plain clothes police beat people indiscriminately. Besides clubs, they used brass knuckles. The clashes lasted for three hours. The fighting then shifted toward the student dormitories, where it continued
The students built barricades and defended themselves by throwing various things out of the windows of the buildings. The police arrested a lot of people, who were given big fines. A student, Zbigniew Glebocki was badly beaten by the police, jailed and charged with assaulting policemen. He risks getting a prison sentence.
### Anti-terrorist brigade storms steelworks
However, the bureaucracy seemed to be adopting a conciliatory attitude toward the striking steel workers. It had accepted a mediation mission. Formed on the initiative of the Catholic hierarchy, the group of mediators went to Nowa Huta. Negotiations between the manager and the strike committee, in the presence of the mediators, were to begin at 8am on May 5. But this was only a smokescreen to get the activists
Six hours before, at 2am, the Anti-terrorist Brigade of the Ministry of the Interior stormed the steelworks. It broke into the rolling mill, where the headquarters of
"An enormous escalation in the repression" THE VICE-CHAIR of the Central Executive Committee of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), Agata Michalek, a political sciences student at the Jagellon University in Cracow, gave the following description of the political situation in Poland in a telephone interview with International Viewpoint on May 6.
For the first time since the anti-working-class crackdown in December 1981, the repressive forces have launched a punitive operation against workers inside a factory. Since 1982, the police had only attacked street demonstrations. What happened in Nowa Huta is an enormous escalation in the repression, a step toward mass repression within the factories. It was carried out with the maximum violence short of using firearms. In Nowa Huta, the way has been opened for a new, extremely dangerous dynamic of repression.
For that reason, the student youth in Cracow, along with our party and other independent organizations, consider that the top-priority task today is building firm and broad protest against the repression in Nowa Huta. We have to do everything possible to keep mass repression from spreading, from hitting the Lenin shipyard workers in Gdansk and the strikers in other enterprises or the student movement. It is clear that the regime wants to provoke premature social explosions in order to crush them with all the violence it can muster and thereby "pacify" the society.
This worries us enormously. The Solidarnosc leaders Stanislaw Handzlik and Mieczyslaw Gil sent us a message before the police attacked Nowa Huta. They recommended that we should not organize a sit-in strike in the faculties but use other forms of protest in order to avoid the regime launching physical repression inside the university and crushing our movement.
Yesterday, we could see from experience that Gil and Handzlik were right. During the big assembly, large contingents of police surrounded the university, including units of the Anti-Terrorist Brigade that had stormed the Lenin complex a few hours before. They were seeking a violent confrontation. They wanted to clash with the monitors organized by the Student Self-Management
A unit tried to break into a school, but they were driven back by the students They tried to force the doors. They pulled back 50 meters only after a very energetic protest by the rector. Rector Koi and Vice-rector Grodzicki have conducted themselves with great dignity. They support the student protest. They have asked us to use intelligent forms of struggle, because they are afraid that there is a desire to crush our university, which is the country's most important center of academic life and is leading the student mobilization. We have abandoned our original plan of occupying the schools. Together with the teaching International Viewpoint #141 • May 16, 1988 the strike committee was, by using an armored car to break down the steel outer door. Twelve members of the strike committee were arrested. Six others, including Andrzej Szewczuwaniec and Stanislaw Handzlik, managed to get away. The total number of arrests is not known. But there is information on about fifty strikers held in two jails in Cracow.
The police made a frenzied assault on the workers. The ones they managed to catch were forced to kneel and then beaten with clubs. Others who fell to the ground were
Those who refused to go back to work were forced to run a gauntlet between two long rows of police. One worker had both legs broken by club blows. Another suffered a fractured skull. Dozens of others had fractured collar bones, head wounds and other grave injuries. Maciej Mach, vice-president of the strike committee, was seen lying unconscious, covered with
The police then threw them into ambulances like bloody sacks. At least 42 people were hospitalized with serious wounds outside the department of Cracow. After the Anti-Terrorist Brigade left, units of the riot police (ZOMO) occupied the grounds, demolishing the strike committee headquar ters, wrecking toilets, smashing windows and doors, as well as a computer command center. The police attacked the strikers again at 7am, 9am and 11am the same
Despite this ferocity, the strike was not broken. Twice, at 7am, led by Andrzej Szewczuwaniec, and then at 9am the strikers marched through the plant. Each time they were brutally attacked by the ZOMO. A lot of workers did not go back to work, observing the strike committee's decision that workers should stay home if the police
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"For a sliding scale of wages"
SINCE THE beginning of the Nowa Huta strike, the activists of the cleared out the plant. Some of them have presented sick-leave forms for injuries resulting from the police action.
In five shops, the workers continued the strike despite the presence of the police. In
POLAND
Polish Socialist Party (PPS) in Wroclaw have concentrated their all, about 12,000 workers remained on strike, out of a total workforce of about efforts on broadening the movement. On April 28, they organized a
30,000. A six-member underground strike rally in front of the Dolmel factory, where on April 29, after a day-long committee was formed. Centers for aid to strike, the workers won a substantial wage increase and a guarantee the strikers and information on the strikes were set up in two churches in the city.
On May 5, Jozef Pinior and three of his comrades were arrested as
Collections of medicine, food and money were organized. To replace the strikers, the they tried to enter the factory. (Pinior, Czeslaw Borowczyk, Jolanta management brought in workers from the
Skiba and Aleksandra Sarata have been indicted for assaulting a
Huta Katowice steelworks, as well as police officer at the factory gate, an extremely serious charge.) The police also raided the apartments of party members. The following is
The students' solidarity was not broken the text of a leaflet distributed by the Wroclaw Regional Workers' either. At the Jagellon
University in
Committee of the PPS on May 5, 1988:
Cracow, the Student Self-Management
Committee organized a rally, during which
"The Communist regime is trying to maintain itself by means of an
4,000 students, along with the rector and anti-working class pseudo-economic reform. Exploitation is his deputies, adopted a statement saying, increasing. Wages are a smaller and smaller part of production costs,
"In the spirit of the solidarity of the intellithe working week is increasing, workers rights are being throttled.
gentsia with the workers, we express our
The new labor code that is now being drafted is intended to carry this unreserved support for the strikers at the
Lenin steelworks and other enterprises and further. Soon parliament will grant special powers to the government.
universities in the country. In particular,
"No wage increase, no matter how large, will offer us a guarantee we want to express our appreciation of the against the effects of inflation. This is why we have to demand the fact that they have demanded an improveestablishment of a mechanism of automatic cost-of-living increases ment in the material situation of health and
"The aim of strikes that are breaking out now is not getting more bank notes printed that will not have any material counterpart. Their
"For trade union and aim is to force the regime to recognize the workers as subjects [as political pluralism"
opposed to objects] of economic and political changes. Their aim is to
"We protest against the use of force win the following demands: re-establishment of trade union pluralism, release of political prisoners, establishment of a sliding scale of against striking workers and students.... We demand the immediate release of the peowages and reinstatement of the fired Solidarnosc activists.
ple who have been arrested and suffered
"The stand of the Nowa Huta workers should be an example for all repression for their opinions. We consider the following as the bases for getting out of the present crisis: a real extension of democracy through the establishment of trade-union and political pluralism, the implementation of real structural reforms in the economy and the guarantee of autonomy for the universities."
At another meeting held on the evening of May 5, the students at the Jagellon University elected a strike committee that declared a stay-away strike at the schools and a sit-in strike in the dormitories. The students at the School of Mines and Steel
Technology (AGH) joined this strike on
May 6. The declaration adopted on the previous evening at the Jagellon University was adopted by acclamation at a rally held in the AGH.
The striking students decided to send emissaries to other universities in the country, in order to invite them to join in protest action and solidarity with the workers, as well as to co-sign the Cracow declaration.
They also decided to fight for the release of the student Glebocki, in order to keep him from being tried, since that would be a dangerous precedent.
In the meantime, in several other universities rallies and strikes took place, notably in Warsaw, Poznan, Wroclaw and
Gdansk. * that there would be no repression.
- that is, a sliding scale of wages.
the workers of Poland!"* Statement of the Lenin Steel Complex Strike Committee "WE BEGAN the strike in the Lenin steel combine at 9am on April 26. We are demanding an increase of 12,000 zlotys in price-rise compensation for all workers in industry, health care and education, as well as for retirees. In our list of demands, we also include an automatic permanent scale of wage increases tied to price increases for
"The economic policy of the authorities of the People's Republic of Poland has brought millions of workers and their families to the brink of destitution. We refuse to tighten our belts under coercion. Our confidence in the reforms promised by the party is exhausted. In boycotting the November referendum, we paid them back with their own coin. We responded to contempt and humiliation with contempt.
"We are demanding an increase of 50% in the basic wage for all workers in the complex. We also want to regain the right to an eight-hour day, which was won a long time ago. We want wages that will assure us and our families a decent life and a wellearned rest after work.
"We will not abandon these demands, because they represent the will of the workers who have elected us as their representatives. Life has shown once again that the delegates elected by the official union in steel do not represent the interests of all the workers. Our negotiations with the management of the combine are difficult. But we are hopeful of reaching an accord.
"We declare that the management's attempts to intimidate us by the threat of police intervention are an expression of the administration's arrogance. Our answer is that, with our full sense of responsibility, we striking workers in the combine are prepared to offer our jobs to our 'guests.'
"We thank all those who have supported us actively with their solidarity actions. We thank you, Lech, for the words you sent us when we set out on this course. Stand with us, as we do with you, for better or for
Nowa Huta, 10pm April 27, 1988. May 16, 1988 • #141 International Viewpoint
Mitterrand wins second term
FRANCE a large majority in favor of new legislative elections. However, Mitterrand's prospective centrist allies are very much opposed to a dissolution of the parliament, as Simone Weill, one of the most liberal of the centrist leaders, made clear on the night of May 8. They are also demanding that the president prove himself in "deeds" before they will accept any alliance with him. The deeds
THE RIGHT was by no means reconciled to losing this election, despite Mitterrand's reorientation to a coalition with the bourgeois moderates. That was made abundantly clear by a whole series of adventures in the final days before the vote, the most notable of which were a deal with Iran for the release of French hostages held by Islamic fundamentalists in Beirut and the massacre of Kanak nationalists in New Caledonia
(see page 28). It was also made clear by the evident bitterness of right-wing spokespersons on TV following the computer projection pointing to Mitterrand's victory.
Conversely, the defeat of an aggressive right touched off explosions of joy by 'the people of the left," in particular young people and immigrants. Philippe Seguin, minister of social affairs in Chirac's government, one of the sharpest political observers on the right, stressed sardonically that Mitterrand was going to have trouble with "the people of the left who are now in the streets."
GERRY FOLEY
HE SINISTER figure of Chirac's
T minister of the interior, Charles
Pasqua, cast a lengthening shadow over the campaign of the right for the second round. He was the protagonist of the prime minister's last minute dramatic strokes. He was also a bridge to the extreme right National Front, having created a sensation by telling a magazine interviewer shortly after the first round that
Chirac's party shared the same "values" as
National Front voters. On the evening of the first-round elections themselves, he included the National Front in the family of
In fact, the National Front leader, Jean-
Marie Le Pen, seemed to be leading the right wing by the nose in the campaign for the second round. On the strength of his breakthrough in the first round, Le Pen became major political personality, appearing very frequently on TV. He pressed the gov-
Le Pen vote represented a "national upsurge against socialism."
The working-class vote for Le Pen was generally a negative, rather than a positive one. Le Pen offered working people nothing positive. His economic program was simply a more strident version of the freeenterprise policies of the "respectable
On the electoral level, Mitterrand apparently gained from a situation that remains stable overall but is marked by growing feelings of unease among the population. He presented himself as the candidate of institutional "continuity" plus "generosity," "openness," and so on. On the level of the real forces in society, his majority and his strategy are extremely contradictory.